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A review by dllh
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
2.0
I really struggled with this one, which I suppose makes me a philistine. I've certainly read more difficult books, but the payoff in the difficult books I've liked is a lot bigger than any payoff this book had for me.
My tepid response to it has actually led me to begin to inspect my attitudes toward literature by women. I like a whole lot of literature by women, and some of my favorite books I've read in the last few years have been by women (some of my best friends are X). I don't think I have a chip on my shoulder about literature by women in general. But this book made me think at times of work by male authors whose work feels similar in places but has resonated more with me. For example, although Lessing's style here is very very different from Gaddis's, I feel like there's a kinship between this book and J R. I count J R among my favorite books in spite of its being annoying in some places and uninteresting or melodramatic in others. The books surely deal in similar material -- art and madness and the insufficiency of language and fragmentation of the psyche and of ideologies and of relationships. But Gaddis's book, which treats these topics from a generally male perspective resonates with me, while Lessing's, which treats them from a generally female perspective, does not. Am I just a pig?
None of this is to say that there weren't things to like in the book. There was humor and occasional profundity. There were scenes or ideas that made a lot of sense to me and that worked for me as written.
But there was also just so very much interaction between men and women that simply did not compute for me. I'm capable of imagining relationships and interactions that don't square with my own particular experience of the world. I enjoy it, even. But so much of what transpires between men and women in this book just seems written by someone who has never observed men and women interacting together. Some of this I realize is because of the period in which the book is written. I thought from time to time of work by Ayn Rand (yuck, I know) or of some of the detective novels I've been reading, in which people behave in ways that I know are dated and stilted and not really the ways most people interact anymore. Maybe literary fiction (by men and women) of the 30s through the early 60s is shot through with this sort of writing and I've just missed it all because most of the fiction I've read from the period is postmodern work that's just doing different things that have caught more of my attention than the relationship dynamics. Or perhaps, internet hermit that I am, I'm the weirdo who doesn't know how people interact.
At any rate, for the struggle this book represented for me, I'd really want there to be a lot bigger payoff, and it just didn't float my boat.
My tepid response to it has actually led me to begin to inspect my attitudes toward literature by women. I like a whole lot of literature by women, and some of my favorite books I've read in the last few years have been by women (some of my best friends are X). I don't think I have a chip on my shoulder about literature by women in general. But this book made me think at times of work by male authors whose work feels similar in places but has resonated more with me. For example, although Lessing's style here is very very different from Gaddis's, I feel like there's a kinship between this book and J R. I count J R among my favorite books in spite of its being annoying in some places and uninteresting or melodramatic in others. The books surely deal in similar material -- art and madness and the insufficiency of language and fragmentation of the psyche and of ideologies and of relationships. But Gaddis's book, which treats these topics from a generally male perspective resonates with me, while Lessing's, which treats them from a generally female perspective, does not. Am I just a pig?
None of this is to say that there weren't things to like in the book. There was humor and occasional profundity. There were scenes or ideas that made a lot of sense to me and that worked for me as written.
But there was also just so very much interaction between men and women that simply did not compute for me. I'm capable of imagining relationships and interactions that don't square with my own particular experience of the world. I enjoy it, even. But so much of what transpires between men and women in this book just seems written by someone who has never observed men and women interacting together. Some of this I realize is because of the period in which the book is written. I thought from time to time of work by Ayn Rand (yuck, I know) or of some of the detective novels I've been reading, in which people behave in ways that I know are dated and stilted and not really the ways most people interact anymore. Maybe literary fiction (by men and women) of the 30s through the early 60s is shot through with this sort of writing and I've just missed it all because most of the fiction I've read from the period is postmodern work that's just doing different things that have caught more of my attention than the relationship dynamics. Or perhaps, internet hermit that I am, I'm the weirdo who doesn't know how people interact.
At any rate, for the struggle this book represented for me, I'd really want there to be a lot bigger payoff, and it just didn't float my boat.